The Press: Publishers Fume

Professor Andre Siegfried, French sociologist, at one point in his book, America Comes of Age, remarks: “The great newspapers, as everyone knows, live entirely by their advertising. Logically, therefore, they are bound to fall sooner or later under the influence of high finance and big business which pays for publicity. . . . The national interests thus possess an effective means of moulding the public to their ends by withholding what they think it should not know and presenting each subject from the desired angle.”

Frank Nelson Doubleday, potent publisher of magazines and books, pounced on Professor Siegfried’s words and found that they were meat for his new pet, Personality.* He wrote to leading U. S. newspaper publishers and asked them what they thought of Professor Siegfried’s remarks. The results were printed in the July Personality.

Adolph S. Ochs exploded into a denunciation and a challenge. If M. Siegfried didn’t know what a great newspaper was, if he by any chance was unaware that the New York Times, pillar of respectability, printed all the news that’s fit to print and not another line, if he had the insolence to name the Times or any other “great newspaper,”—well, he would find out what a libel suit was like. “Produce,” wrote Publisher Ochs,† “a single example of a ‘great newspaper’ which is subservient to advertisers . . . name newspaper and owner.” Name, if he dare, the New York Times. Name Adolph S. Ochs.

The wrath of Publisher Ochs found a ready echo from a rival, Ralph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World. Publisher Pulitzer produced records. Said he, hotly: “The World has deliberately thrown away . . . will continue to throw away . . . millions of dollars of advertising by attacking for the public good various interests.” He flung a contemptuous denial across the sea to M. Siegfried: “With the exception of a few blackguardly sheets . . . very precisely known . . . the press does not prostitute itself.”

More calmly, with businesslike brevity, Col. William Franklin Knox, general manager of Hearst newspapers, slapped M. Siegfried’s hands, tweaked his nose. “All this,” sneered Col. Knox, “is merely a reiteration of an oft-repeated slander in which ill-informed people frequently indulge.”

From Philadelphia came the broadside of Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis, publisher of the New York Evening Post, Philadelphia Public Ledger, Satevepost. Publisher Curtis who last week observed his 78th birthday, his 53rd year as a publisher, could not content himself with sharp, angry answer. He fought back. What about this man Siegfried, anyway? “He is said to be a professor. The title is very likely a misnomer.” He groped for epithets. “Absurd,” he cried . . . “Ridiculous . . . Ignorant . . .”

* A monthly “magazine of biography.”

† As all journalists, few laymen, know Mr. Ochs owns the Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times. Grateful Chattanoogans last week were preparing an elaborate celebration of the soth anniversary of his purchase of the paper.